ProjectExperience

The community of project management is currently teeming with “practitioners”, consultants, PMI volunteers and onlookers. You have heard numerous times managers speak about using project management as a tool to help them achieve their goals. However, one would wonder why different organizations continue to have different interpretations of what project management is.

Some organizations give a title of a project manager to a staff and use him/her as a procurement agent. Some organizations expect the project manager to be an admin assistant to someone higher doing clerical work. Some organizations will expect their project managers to simply agree with their superiors and not say no even when they don’t agree. Otherwise, they are looking at walking out the door sometime soon.

What is really causing this trend? Is it the lack of understanding by many organizations? Is it due to fear of losing control that management is not willing to really use the project managers as they should be? The project management community should probably address this and find out how we can get better in the practice of project management. We have always promoted the best practices but when we hit the ground running, we almost always forget the correct way of executing the work of a project management professional.

I would ask the community and may be PMI to champion the cause of project managers and continue to help elevate them as strategic resource in any organization.